The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Steve Cole

"There were drums made of goat skins and cheese boxes."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My father was a fisherman all his life but he died a young man. I was five years old when he died. My father and my uncle would fish together. They had a schooner and they sailed it from Carbonear to St. John's. Then they would come back to St. John's and get rid of it.

My uncle and my brother and I had a room up at Labrador. We didn't own a schooner, never did. The room was a few miles down this side of St. Anthony. We fished there where there were lots of fish at the time.

The last year I was there, we didn't make anything. We had your sister with us and we promised her $25 for the whole summer. We didn't get that amount out of the fish we had that summer. I think it was 170 quintals or shore fish as they are sometimes called. That's fish that has been dried. Well, that was the year I gave it up.

You talk about smart people. Now, I mean, they got navigation and they got all this and they got all everything in the world, you know. At that time, there were icebergs, big icebergs. We'd take the old schooner and there was nothing but canvas. No motor or nothing like that. Just the canvas. On the deck there was a pile of sticks, like rails. They were rinded and dried and made light. When the schooner would run up against the iceberg, we'd take the sticks - maybe 15 to 20 feet long - and use then to push against the icebergs to keep the schooner from running into it. That's the kind of life the old people had. They did a great job you know. You take someone with no education and they could take an old schooner out of Carbonear and into St. John's and then down the Labrador coast. They were smart, smart people.

I helped uncle Nat with the trap skiff and stuff. I never helped with the building of any schooner because the last one my uncle built I was only a small boy. My uncle built it in his yard. It was about 30 ft long. He hauled it out to Carbonear with two horses and a cart. He fished on the Labrador coast for years after that in her.

My wife had a store and she looked after that while I was gone working. One time I was gone for 18 months. There was no way to live here then. There was no way to make a living. I was married in 1932 by my wife passed away several years ago.

Years ago, when we used to go to North Sydney, we had to have an immigration card. One time I went to Montreal. I worked in a union up there for 22 cents an hour.

I was in the Orange Lodge since I was 17 years old. Back then there were drums made of goat skins and cheese boxes. I can remember when my mother used to hold church meetings on Wednesday night in the kitchen. Ten or twelve women would come in and have their meeting and everything there. It was all warm for the church meetings.

Click here for a PDF version of Victoria: Recalling Our Heritage.

Stories

Click Below for each story.
Power Plant | Victoria's Birth | Prison Camp | Midwifery

Special Memories

Click below for each memory
Josh Antle | Eva Ash | Samuel Burke | Doris Clarke | Ester Clarke | James Clarke
John Clarke | Nathaniel Clarke | Reg and Emmie Clarke | Roy Clarke
Beulah Cole | Mark Cole | Steve Cole | Clarence Collins | Nina Curnew
James Dean | Helen Higdon | Leonard Inniss | Fanny Inniss | Millie Langer | Virda Layden
Hazel Peckham | Violet Parsons | Norman Penney | Rosalie Penney | Harold Priddle
George Snooks | Sarah Snow | Jean Stephenson | William Stephenson
Lillian Vaters | Maxine Vaters | Annie Whyte | Cyril Whyte